Powell maintains Nats' hold

The National Party candidate for Shepparton, Jeanette Powell, has seemingly ensured that the party's stranglehold of the Goulburn Valley centre of 54 years will continue.

With 81.7 per cent of the vote counted, Ms Powell, who stood down as upper house member for North Eastern Province to contest the seat, appears to have beaten a strong challenge from the Liberals' Stephen Merrylees.

Mr Merrylees had 8584 votes (30.5 per cent) to Ms Powell's 8136 votes (28.9 per cent), but Ms Powell is expected to have a comfortable margin after the distribution of preferences.

Shepparton was expected to be among the tightest seats, with independent Chris Hazelman favoured to take it after his strong showing in 1999.

However, Mr Hazelman, who is on leave of absence from his fifth term as mayor of Shepparton, polled below expectations, only attracting 15.5 per cent of the vote. He said the presence of Mr Merrylees - the Liberals did not contest the seat in 1999 - had slashed the votes of both himself and Ms Powell. He polled particularly poorly in the urban booths, and knew he was in trouble early in the night.");document.write("

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Ms Powell said the Nationals had overcome the damage of their coalition with the Kennett government, and had regained the confidence of the bush. "People out there are looking to the National Party, and they've realised that over the last three years we have been making our own way as a single party, and they're agreeing with what we stand for," Ms Powell said.

"I think that is really important so that they now have been able to differentiate between the National and Liberal parties."

Mr Merrylees, a former five-term Strathbogie mayor, conducted a strong campaign but had been largely overshadowed by the high-profiled Ms Powell and Mr Hazelman.

However, Ms Powell said the Liberal policy of creating three-cornered contests in all seats had proved a failure with the party attempting to move away from its city heartland.

"The Liberal Party now will have to start focusing their efforts on their city electorates, and not so much on their rural electorates," Ms Powell said.

However, Mr Hazelman had earlier said the "dynamics" of this election were vastly different from three years ago when he was denied victory only by Labor directing preferences to the Nationals' Don Kilgour.